Goal Orientation and Leaders Empowering Behavior : Mediating Effect of Trust

Abstract

Organizational scholars and practitioners have growingly paid attention to the topic of empowerment, and empowering leadership has been considered one of the most important ways to empower employees at work. Although many organizational studies have investigated the effect of leaders empowering behavior on employees attitudes and behavior, few studies on the factors that affect leaders empowering behavior have been conducted, despite its importance in empowering leadership literature. In this regard, the purpose of the present study was to investigate the antecedents of leaders empowering behavior. Specifically, this study examined the role of subordinates goal orientation in leaders empowering determination. According to the situational leadership theories, follower characteristics may play a central and active role in leadership effectiveness. Moreover, since goal orientation is theoretically related to attitudes in achievement situation, it may be an important factor to perform empowered task. Therefore, this study investigated followers goal orientation as an antecedent of empowering behavior. The present study also investigated the mediating effect of trust on the relationship between subordinates goal orientation and leaders empowering behavior. Since empowering behavior entails uncertainty and risks, from the leaders perspective, their trust in followers would be critical in showing empowering behavior. This study examined how differently leaders develop trust in followers according to followers goal orientation and the effect of trust on leaders empowering behavior. Furthermore, considering that empowered employees are more likely to feel encouraged to challenge the existing ways to improve work efficiency, this study examined the effect of leaders empowering behavior on employee proactive behaviors. Analysis of field data from 169 leader-follower dyad revealed that subordinates learning goal orientation was positively related to leaders empowering behavior. However, the relationships between performance goal orientations (i.e., performance prove goal orientation and performance avoid goal orientation) and leaders empowering behavior were not significant. Subordinates learning goal orientation was positively related to leaders trust in followers when trust was measured by subordinates. The mediating effect of leaders trust in followers on the link between learning goal orientation and leaders empowering behavior was also supported. However, when trust was measured by leader, the relationship between learning goal orientation and leader's trust was not supported. One interesting founding was that the correlation of two trust variables (i.e., measured by leaders vs. subordinates) was insignificant. Regarding this trust perception gap, I additionally conducted posteriori interview employees of the organization where survey was conducted to find out underlying reasons. The most frequent answers for the question about trust perception gap were hierarchical organizational culture and the lack of communication. Since two performance goal orientations were not significantly correlated to leaders trust, the mediating hypotheses of leaders trust on the link between two performance goal orientations and leaders empowering were not supported. Analysis for the effect of leaders empowering on employees proactive behaviors, such as personal initiative, taking charge, and creativity was conducted. The beta coefficients of leaders empowering on personal initiative and taking charge were positive but insignificant. However, leaders empowering was positively related to employees creativity. By investigating the role of goal orientation and trust in determining leaders empowering behavior, this study contributes to integrating goal orientation literature, trust literature, and empowering leadership literature. In addition, practical implications, such as selection of learning goal oriented employees and training of empowering leadership are suggested.